Battle of Castiglione

Battle of Castiglione

Part of: French Revolutionary Wars

History painting by Victor Adam, 1836

date	August 5, 1796
location	Castiglione
exit	Victory of France

Parties to the conflict
France	Austria
Commander
Napoleon Bonaparte Charles Augereau	Dagobert Wurmser Karl Sebottendorf
Troop strength
about 25,000 men	approx. 30,000 men
losses
about 1,100	about 3000

The battle at Castiglione took place on August 5, 1796 at the southern end of Lake Garda near Castiglione delle Stiviere . The troops of the French Italian army under Napoleon Bonaparte met an Austrian army under General Wurmser .

prehistory

If the Italian campaign , which was supposed to make the 28-year-old Bonaparte a celebrated hero, initially went smoothly, it was now confronted by a massive opponent in the immediate vicinity of the Mantua fortress . He suffered some major defeats in the July-August period.

Because an Austrian army was approaching, Bonaparte gave up the siege of Mantua, which had been ongoing since June 4, 1796 . Around 15,000 Austrians, many of them wounded, were trapped in the besieged fortress at the beginning of August. Bonaparte reckoned that the Austrian army believed that the French army was at the gates of Mantua and wanted to place it there. He intended to take the initiative by concentrating his forces and rubbing off the forces that Wurmser had carelessly divided up.

The Austrians actually advanced with strong forces to terrorize Mantua. Wurmser advanced along Lake Garda , but had his main army advance separately from his artillery and cavalry forces. In the first skirmishes from July 30th to 31st, the French army was able to carry out an orderly retreat, defend strategically favorable positions and gather their forces.

On August 2nd, an Austrian division took Castiglione and repulsed the French General Valette . Bonaparte saw this as a critical mistake and sharply condemned Valette's withdrawal.

Finally, the Austrian divisions were able to be driven back one after the other on August 2nd and 3rd at Lonato and in other smaller skirmishes in the direction of Lake Garda. Wurmser had spread his forces too far apart in the hope of circumventing the French army with his right flank. Bonaparte used this with an offensive against the opposing center and interrupted the communication of the Austrian troops. Wurmser did not succeed in gathering his strength in the area around Castiglione in time; he still had to organize the troops that had disbanded after the battle of Lonato.

Course of the battle

Plan of the battle after a map by W. Blackwood, 1870

On August 4th, the French General Augereau met the Austrian troops in Castiglione. Large units of the French army under Generals Sauret , Herbin , Dallemagne and Saint-Hilaire had marched towards Castiglione to support him all day of August 4th.

On August 5th, the entire French army, with a combat strength of 25,000 soldiers, including General Sérurier's division , met at Castiglione. Masséna took over the left flank, Augereau the center and Fiorella was on the right French flank. The mass attack was successful everywhere and drove the Austrian forces to a disorderly retreat.

However, because of the strenuous marches, the French army had to give up direct pursuit of the enemy. The Austrian troops fled across the river Mincio , on the opposite bank of which Wurmser wanted to regroup and regroup his forces. But he did not succeed in the following days, while the French troops advanced again.

consequences

General Dagobert Wurmser

The Austrians under Wurmser were consistently pursued to the Adige and pushed back to Tyrol until August 11th. Some troops were enclosed first in Verona and then in Mantua, the siege of which was resumed. Many of the Austrian units scattered about in the Italian mountain valleys finally surrendered.

General Masséna had covered 160 km with his troops between July 29 and August 5. The Austrians had lost 15,000 soldiers and 70 guns in the previous campaign.

Bonaparte took advantage of this success when the troops were inferior by informing the Board of Directors the next day: “Voila, another campaign came to an end in five days. Wurmser is done. We captured 70 cannons and took 15,000 prisoners. There were 6,000 wounded ”.

Louis-Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux made a copy of the letter, which was then made available to the members of the Directory by optical telegraph . The letter from the director (Le President du Directoire executif) contains the addition: "... parle Telegraph". The optical telegraph was introduced by Claude Chappe in 1793. Napoleon built a network with over 500 stations. His opponents had nothing like it.

The Italian campaign and the battle near Castiglione laid the foundation for Napoleon's reputation as the "invincible".

The defeated Wurmser had express orders to bring relief to the fortress of Mantua again. He strengthened himself in Tyrol and marched again through the valley of the Brenta with the aim of interrupting Napoleon's supply lines, while Paul Davidovich was to advance on the Adige at the same time. Bonaparte fought Davidovich back behind Trient at Rovereto on September 5 , and turned in forced marches against Wurmser, whom he also defeated at Bassano on September 8 . Wurmser had to retreat to Mantua with his remaining troops on September 13th and strengthened the crew there by 16,000 men.

literature

• Julius von Pflugk-Harttung : Revolution and Empire. From the era of tyranny of Napoleon I. . Patria-Verlag, Berlin 1910 (letter from Louis-Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux ).
• Emmanuel de Las Cases : Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène . Édition du Seuil, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-02-038635-6 (2 volumes, Fragments de la campagne d'Italie ).
• Viktor Hortig: Bonaparte von Mantua, dissertation, Rostock 1903

Single references

1. ↑ Schlosser's world history. Volume XV, Oswald Seehagen Verlag, Berlin 1891, p. 214